Anthropological Antiquity

The appropriation of anthropology for political, economic or religious means is far from being a new phenomena. What is interesting in this case is the construction of an Islamic myth of anthropological antiquity which is framed in opposition to the contemporariness of Anthropology as a Western form of knowledge.

The Iran Book News Agency announced the publication of a new anthropological book: “The Philosophy of Anthropology” released by the Religious Press. According to the author, Dr.Yahya Kabir, “Islamic revelation in particular and the religion of Islam in general have a lot to say in six branches of anthropology…Subjects like Levi-Straus’s method of anthropological criticism, Hegel’s historical anthropology, social anthropology of Marx and Schleiermacher’s religious anthropology are all discussed in this work in comparison with superior theories of Islamic thinkers…” Referring to the seven hundred years of history of anthropology among Muslim philosophers, he said: “This is while western thinkers have only proposed these ideas in the late two-hundred years.”

In rediscovering anthropology as a Muslim form of knowledge, anthropology is used to glorify the wisdom of Islam, an act which also venerates anthropology for its truthful insights!